“Without putting any of us—especially Liz—in jeopardy.”
“Yup … as far as anyone knows, he’s a dead man with a whole bunch of saps left behind to grieve his sorry ass. Unbeknownst to us, he’d been drawing the sharks in for 24 hours before his supposed death, making any kind of substantive investigation impossible.”
“Man, in BUD/S, he finished first on that five and a half nautical-mile swim along the Pacific’s Coronado coastline,” John admitted. “Liz was right—the man was a fish.”
“Is a fish,” Charlie corrected.
“But you found his mangled re-breather,” Caroline said, her face burning bright with anger.
“Who knew what he had in his dive pack? That portable oxygen unit I used for my recon dive would have gotten him far enough away in the aftermath of the explosion.”
“But his wetsuit? You found a shredded leg.”
“Again, we didn’t find his leg in it.”
“So, where the hell is he now?” Knightley asked.
“On his way to Peru, I guess to finish off Operation Samba in the same way he just hit Bolivia.” The footage on the screen disappeared and a sloppy, handwritten travel itinerary took its place. “Before and after his funeral, he’d been hiding out in Panama, then flew to La Paz. Fast forward 26 hours and he’s on a flight to Tarapoto. Someone must be helping him because there is no way he’d know where and when to hit—or where to locate Morales for that matter. His last stop after Prague is Geneva. This is a timeline I put together directly from Thornton’s flight reservations and manifests.”
The faces on each Obsidian member were as cold as the freezer.
“Apart from La Paz, he’s using small executive and cargo airports,” Caroline observed.
“I picked that up immediately. He’s avoiding bio-metric check-in scanning.”
“Ch … Charlie? Do you think Dad is helping him?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“What does he have on your father, Jane? Did he do a favor for him? Does your father owe him?” Rick asked in light of his conversation with Jimmy.
“Well, I don’t know that he has anything blackmailable-like, but he did give him two-million dollars to restore Longbourn.”
He laughed wryly and shook his head. “Clever man. Darcy’s calling in his markers. He needs equipment and supplies in every one of these places and he’s turned a lot of people into assets because they owe him.” It all made sense and he went over in detail what he’d discovered from Jimmy about the Pemberley assassin and Liz about the money transfers.
“That bastard!” Caroline bellowed, slamming her hand on the desk. Gone was the cool composure of a Kunoichi. Perhaps her anger was more that he’d bested her critical thinking, taking advantage of all their distracting grief in order to hide under the radar.
“Actually,” Sarah spoke up, “I think it’s the most selfless, romantic thing I’ve ever heard. All of you may feel deceived because of the love you feel for him—and Liz—but he’s willing to endure your censure and anger, and maybe lose his wife forever, just to keep you safe until he kills the enemy. He was gutted by the explosions at Pemberley that were focused on Liz. And then your safehouse was blown and Knightley was almost killed. He knew the drug lord was going to pick you all off one by one to get under his skin and draw him out. Don’t you see? There is no greater love, and Darcy has taken vengeance upon his shoulders. He’s doing to Morales exactly what Morales had planned for him.”
Caroline examined her fingernails. Jane nodded. Knightley wiped the sweat from his forehead, and Charlie smirked. As for him, he admired the placid expression on Sarah’s face. Perhaps it was her outsider perspective or her technically-abandoned experience in the Amazon that caused her introspection. No one had come for her, had protected her, or sought payback for her captivity. Her own government turned tail. Further, his own love for her helped him to see how his cousin believed that this was the only recourse available to him. A dead man was the ultimate stealth weapon.
However, those in that room—and him—would still need time to process Sarah’s wisdom and accept, let alone forgive Darcy’s extreme decision. The guilt they had all felt for one reason or another was now being viewed as a betrayal of them.
“Okay, so … we need eyes on him for confirmation,” Knightley stated.
“We already have it,” Charlie said.
On the fourth monitor, he patched in two hacked security cameras at El Alto International Airport in La Paz. From two different angles, Darcy stood at the airport customs desk getting processed. The split-screen videos were very clear. Dressed in black, from ball cap to boots, to familiar gear bag, he looked like shit with a scraggly beard and long hair. The monitor zoomed in and froze on a close up of his face.
“Holy fuck. Well, there’s no doubt it’s him. And he’s gonna need back up. Inevitably, something will not go as planned,” Rick said, pushing his personal emotions down. Turning to Jane, he gave his first directive. “I think you get the hardest part, Jane. You have to talk to your father.”
“What if he doesn’t come clean with me?”
“He will. Use that charm we brought you into Obsidian to use.”
“Well, I’m sorta mad at him right now.”
“Get over it.”
Knightley moved his face closer to his desk camera. “We’re all overlooking something very important here: Liz. She needs to be told immediately.”
“Does she? That goes against the whole reason he’s doing this,” Rick said.
“I’d want to know as soon as possible,” Sarah spoke up. “I’d want to help him.”
“The way I see it, we’re damned either way. Not telling her makes this so much worse, and if we do tell her, she’s just going to do things half-assed to get to him and end up screwing up his mission anyway. Maybe get them both killed,” Charlie said.
“Um, excuse me? Screw it up? As I remember it, my awesome sister kicked ass in both Paris and Moscow, Charlie. She saved that damn mission and you all know it.”
“She’s right,” Knightley agreed. “Even Caroline can’t deny how she saved her ass.”
“As much as it kills me to admit, it’s true. She has certain skills.”
“I don’t know … I don’t think my sister will believe anything we say. She’ll need to see him for herself. Though I don’t know how she would. Maybe we can show her the airport video?”
“Again, this hard part is going to fall on you, Jane. You know Liz better than any of us. I’m against showing the video, and against telling her, but I’m willing to defer to your measured, sound judgment on this. Right now, Darcy and Liz’s safety, not to mention Obsidian’s anonymity are tantamount in our next steps in light of this Intelligence.” He hoped to God, she understood what he was implying.
“If … let’s say, I think she needs to go to Europe, how can I get her a passport? She lost hers in Russia.”
“That is out of the question,” Rick said.
“What happened to deferring to my decision? I respect your personal and professional position, but this is my sister we’re talking about—my impulsive, sometimes reckless, and love-sick sister. And frankly, her happiness is my mission.”
He sighed, defeated by Charlie’s agreeing head nod and Sarah’s smile.
Caroline huffed, “Why doesn’t she use Mrs. Thornton’s passport.” but she toned the snark down as soon as he gave her the evil eye. “Fine. I have a contact cobbler I used years ago with the Agency. He’ll be able to amend the passport and get her a UK driver’s license on the fly.”
“Good. Thank you, Caroline,” Rick said.
He smiled pensively and laid his palms down on the sleek desk, rising with a renewed purpose he hadn’t felt in a month. “This is the only op on Obsidian’s docket. Caroline, I want you on the first flight out of here to Paraguay. When Jane gets the intel and coordinates of Darcy’s next hit from her father, we’ll transmit everything to you. Be his back—anticipate his moves as though you are in his head.
“Mr. Clean, finish the job in Austria tomorrow night then fly directly to Cadiz.
“And, I’ll go to Venice.” He walked to the cork board filled with clippings and images and removed a data sheet pertaining to mobster Vito Cardillo upstairs in the Italian market. He wondered if the former regional head of Venice’s Cazzatto Compagnia “society” had somehow become embroiled in Darcy’s scheme? “You know, we’re family, broken as we are, and coming together like this proves it. Sarah’s right. He did this for us, now let’s do this with him as quickly as possible so he and Liz can attempt to restore some normalcy to their life. If I know my cousin—he has a plan for that, too. Let’s make it happen.”
“I’m in,” Knightley said. “How about you, Charlie?”
“I’ll go to Prague. Let’s do this.”
20
Operation Liz Darcy
September 3
Virginia
“You’ve come back,” Frances stated in wonderment when Jane walked through the back door of Longbourn at nine in the morning.
“Hi,” she flippantly greeted. “Don’t read into it. I’m still deciding whether to forgive either of you.”
She couldn’t help noting how sick her mom looked, and that tiny bit of concern defied her obstinacy. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I started my chemo yesterday, and … I’m just getting a little sick.”
That would explain the dark rings under her eyes, and yellow pallor—and the classical music. “Are you gonna lose your hair?”
“Oh, honey, I don’t care about my hair. There are more important things that I must overcome than losing a few strands of dyed-blonde hair.”
“Yeah.”
“How … how is Liz?”
“Surviving on the edge. Look, is Dad around?”
“He’s in the greenhouse. He’d been such a dear all night taking care of me that I sent him out to enjoy this glorious morning. No sense in both of us wasting it cooped up in this old house.”
“Liz’s greenhouse has that ability to cure everything—maybe you should spend time out there with him.”
“He needs alone time with his projects.”
And I know why.
Her mom’s hand reached out and touched her bicep. “I … um … if you need for anything … to talk, or just someone to act as sounding board, I am here for you.”
“Like you were all those years for Liz?”
“I know I deserve that, but I’m going to keep trying, Jane. My days of leaving are gone.”
That statement made her uncomfortable. Was her absolute indignance toward her mother because she was looking in the mirror? She knew her own sins as they pertained to leaving those she loved the most when the chips were down or got too complicated—or bored for that matter.
A whiff of her mother’s familiar perfume, long forgotten by the daughter who worshipped the ground the once “best mother in the whole wide world” walked on touched somewhere deep down, and she couldn’t help it when the corner of her lip twitched upward. Undeniably, she couldn’t slight the woman’s resolve whether it because she was dying or because she had changed her ways.
“Thanks,” she said. “I really have to see Dad now.”
She walked to the door and placed her hand on the knob, then suddenly turned. “I have to leave town for a while with Liz, but when I get back … we can go to lunch.”
Frances’s face lit up. “I’ll take you both to The Lucky Penny, just like old times when we girls would slip away on Saturdays!”
The Lucky Penny Café … she remembered. “Okay.”
She left the house even more confused than before. Forgiveness. She would have to spend some time thinking exactly what the word meant and if she was truly ready for it.
As she trudged through the grass, nearing the hothouse, she heard that damn ABBA music again, and took a deep cleansing breath.
Putting on her Obsidian face and not the one Rick instructed her to use the night before, but the one she’d learned from Caroline, she spoke to his hunched back. “Dad?”
Before turning to her, he promptly closed one of the three open laptops facing him on the work table.
“Janie!” he greeted with a bright smile, obviously thinking she was there to forgive him, too. Because why else would she be at Longbourn?
“Are you emailing your son-in-law?”
“Well, that would be quite an email wouldn’t it? Imagine if we could—it would put an end to séances, for sure!”
“Ha. Ha. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I can’t say I do.” He slid from the bar stool, looking quite put-together and clear-eyed despite being called out for his usual duplicity.
“Darcy … you know, Liz’s husband. He’s in Peru now, not six feet under in some bogus grave in Leesburg.”
“Janie, I assure you—”
“Just like you assured Liz and me that Mom just suddenly, clear outta the blue, abandoned her daughters? We know, Dad. We know that he’s alive and going after Morales with your help.”
He sighed then raked his hand through his hair before blowing out a long stream of air from his lungs. “He made me do it.”
“I’m sure he did. Just like that creepy perv guy Crawford made you sell out America. Just like Mom made you lie to us. Look, I’m not here to rehash all your many past sins. This is Obsidian business, that’s it, nothing more.
“I need all the info—everything you have on where he’ll be and when and …” she toyed with the hanging stem of an orchid above her shoulder. “And I need you to lie to him when he gets to Venice.”
“You don’t understand, Jane. This is serious, dangerous business with dangerous people he’s involved with. One wrong move could cost his life.”
“Whatever. One right move, will save his marriage. Priorities, Dad. He’s technically dead anyway.”
“His strikes are coordinated for maximum damage.”
“Yeah, well, the strike to your daughter was a doozy. Give me all the intel on his field operations and we’ll help him. We got this if you do the right thing just like you’re doing with Mom. In Obsidian’s hands everyone will have a happy ever after. You owe Lizzy this and I think it would destroy her to know that you’d been helping Darcy … for how long?”
“Since the day before the funeral.”
She shook her head in disgust. The man made her sick to her stomach.
Easily swayed by her guilting him, he nodded in agreement.
“So, she doesn’t know yet?”
“No and I’m not gonna be the one to tell her he’s alive. We’re all backing away from that. You know how talented she is with knives.”
“Have you talked to her? Where is she?”
She walked around the tight space, admiring the remnants of her sister’s touch. “I spoke with her last night. She’s still in North Carolina. You know, tomorrow’s the crap-ola anniversary of Darcy’s death.”
“My Lizzy-bear … I bet she’s miserable. I must telephone her this evening.”
“Don’t bother, she’s pissed to high-heaven at you and you’ll just pee in her Cheerios, ruining whatever good feels she’s finally having.”
“Good feels? Has something happened?”
“Maybe. She went on some crazy-ass motorcycle ride in the mountains. I haven’t heard her sound this happy since she got married. She giggled! Actually giggled.”
Leaning against the worktable beside her father, she speculated more to herself than to him because, technically, she wasn’t speaking to him ever again. “Something’s up, and I hope it’s not Wentworth. Three days ago, she was about to slit her wrists.”
“Oh dear, that fella at the funeral? The one who had the eyes for her?”
“Yeah. Look, I have to get her to Venice, Italy and I need your help. Rick wants you to book two staterooms aboard that famous Orient Express train to Prague. You know … the one from the movie?”
“You mean the Agatha Christie novel?”
“Who?
Whatever. Google it. She’ll be traveling under a Margaret Thornton British passport.”
“And he’s John Thornton.”
“Yes and they’ll be trapped together on the most luxurious, romantic train in the world, but book him a separate room under this name. She handed him a piece of paper with all the details. “We can’t make their meeting look contrived. It has to be a coinky-dink—got it?”
He sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Janie.”
“I hope so, too, but she deserves to know and like I said, I’m a chicken shit. I can’t tell her; she’ll shoot the messenger or thrust a knife in my chest, and she’s all I have.”
“I know how that feels. You’re braver than I’ll ever be and, well … I know this may not mean much to you, but I am proud of you, Janie. Proud of the woman you’ve become.”
Crappers. Now why did he have to go and pull the heart string? She swallowed hard, never having heard that from him before. “Thanks, but I’m still mad at you.”
***
Jane’s tears came naturally when she dialed Liz’s new telephone number. She sat on the top deck of the houseboat with an afternoon cup of coffee feeling vulnerable as never before. All her true emotions were laid bare these last couple of days and she needed to put them aside and concentrate on her sister, just as she had done when visiting her father. Man, she was so proud of herself; she felt like Caroline delivering one of her ninja throwing stars to the man’s jugular.
“Hi, Janie,” Liz nearly sang into the phone.
“Hi, sissy. Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m getting ready to go up to the farmhouse and have dinner with the Reynoldses. I’m staying the night up there and then in the morning I’m leaving for Big Pine Key in Florida.”
“Florida, huh? Um … that sounds like running water in the background.”
“It is. I’m sitting in the sun, soaking up the gorgeous afternoon filled with incredible memories and good feels as I watch a waterfall behind a mountain cabin.”
In Good Conscience Page 26